Chapter 36 – The Special Person Book

I steal the basketball from Gavin and make the jump shot easily. "Oh yeah! Did you see that?"

Gavin laughs. "Yeah okay, you got me…"

"I don't know what you're doing for my mental health, but my basketball game has really picked up since I started having sessions with you," I say cheerfully, going in for a layup. "Maybe you should take up coaching."

"Maybe you should join a team," Gavin counters. "Seriously…you enjoy sports and you're good at them. Some organised activity might be good for you."

"School's enough organised activity for me," I answer. "I'm working like a dog; they're trying to get me caught up enough to do the SAT with everyone else next spring. And I get to play wiffle ball every Wednesday for community groups."

"Well that's something," Gavin says. "Has there been any word on your mom recently? No visits?"

I bounce the ball and shoot, missing by a mile. "No. I talk to her on the phone sometimes, but that's it."

I don't bother saying that on the rare occasions I manage to get in touch with her she's never sober. It doesn't make any difference now. It's been a month since Mara called off visitation and there's not the remotest possibility that she's considering reinstating it.

"How's Alice doing with that?"

I go after the basketball and toss it back to him. "She's fine with it. Actually, she pretty much just pretends that her life started the day she moved in with the Cullens. She doesn't talk about anything that happened before that, and she won't even touch the phone if she knows Momma is on the other end…she's called Esme mommy a couple of times."

Gavin takes another shot. "How are you all handling that?"

"Esme and Carlisle are discouraging her. They keep telling her that they love having her and she's going to stay with them as long as she needs too, but she has a mommy already and they're not taking her place. Alice is so freaking stubborn though, and she just doesn't want to hear it."

"What about you? How do you feel about that?" Gavin asks.

I shrug. "They're doing the right thing. I mean Esme isn't her mom, and she's not going to magically become her mom just because that's what Alice wants to happen. Right now Momma's a mess and no one is talking about us going back to her, but she could turn it around tomorrow. She probably won't, but she could, and we have to make sure that Alice stays aware of that possibility." I take my time retrieving the ball and lining up another shot, before I say, "I kind of get where Alice is coming from though. Not that I want to call Esme mom or anything, but living at the Cullens is really starting to feel…like it's normal. Like it's home."

For a brief moment I touch the skin over my knuckles. It's slightly lumpy and uneven with scar tissue, but the skin itself is whole and healthy. I'm still biting at it when I'm stressed, but that's no longer often enough to damage it and all the cracks and scabs and rough spots have healed.

"You seem a lot more relaxed; I think it's good that you're feeling at home there," Gaven tells me, bouncing the ball a couple of times and then tucking it under his arm. "I think you're doing really well…but I'm going to have to kick you out because my next appointment is going to be here soon."

"Do you play basketball with everyone?" I ask curiously as we head back in to his office.

"Not everyone," he answers. "A lot of my teen guys like playing ball while we talk, but I do other things. I've got a bucket of fidget toys, and I'll play board games, do some colouring, braid friendship bracelets...whatever people want to do. Whatever helps them start talking." He flips through his appointment calendar. "Now, Thursday or Friday next week?"

I make another appointment and leave, zipping up my fleece against the cold wind as I wait for Esme. Fortunately it's not too long before I see the Mercedes turn the corner, and I slide into the front seat with a grin.

"Thanks. Hey Alice, how are you?"

In the backseat, Alice looks at me solemnly. "We've been at the church, giving people clothes with the food boxes if they want," she mumbles.

This is definitely not the cheerful Alice I'd expected to see; she usually adores helping out at the church. I raise my eyebrows at Esme who gives a tiny shrug and says, "Emmett, look in my purse and you'll find a bank envelope; it's for you."

"What's that for?" I raise my eyebrows when I see the cash in there.

"Allowance. Carlisle and I apologise for not thinking of it before, but Edward's allowance is paid automatically into his bank account and it just didn't occur to us that you were missing out. Edward said this morning that he was going to go shopping tomorrow for a birthday present for Alice, and he thought you might like to buy a gift too but didn't have any money," Esme says.

"You don't have to give me money," I say hastily. "You've already bought me so much stuff. And you feed me…the cost of that alone must be making a dent in the retirement fund."

Esme laughs. "Nonsense. You do chores around the house when you're asked and you should have some money of your own, for going out with friends or saving up for something you want. We'd like to get you set up with a bank account, but we'll have to sort out documents for that so you'll just have to make do with some cash for now."

It's an awkward situation, but I don't want to say no. Having no money at all, ever, completely sucks. Momma wasn't giving it away that often, but if I asked at the right time she's open up her purse and half the time she was so wasted she never noticed if I took some anyway. And it's coming up to my Monkey's birthday and I haven't a bean.

"What do you think of that, Monkey? What do you want me to buy you for your birthday?" I ask, looking back at Alice who is sucking her thumb and staring out the window.

All she does is shrug, and I frown slightly. Something is definitely on her mind, and when we get home I drop my backpack in my room and go look for her.

I find her sitting in the living room, stroking Catkin who is stretched out on the floor by the window in a shaft of afternoon sunlight.

"What's up, Monkey?" I ask quietly.

Alice tickles Catkin under the chin. "It's my birthday on Sunday."

"I know." I look at her curiously. She's been wild with excitement over having an ice skating party and inviting her friends. It's all she's talked about since Esme and Carlisle told her she could do it…so why this sudden turnaround? "Aren't you looking forward to your party?"

"Yeah, I still want the party. But when it's your birthday at school you have to be the Special Person in the classroom. That means you get to give Treehorn his parakeet treats and be first in line and you can take the notes to the office…all the fun stuff." Despite all of this sounding exactly like the kind of first grade junk that Alice usually loves, she looks like she's describing a funeral.

"So what's the problem then?" I ask.

"Here, I'll show you." Alice crawls over to where she's dropped her book bag and drags out a heavy scrapbook that she pushes towards me. "All the other things are fun, but you have to do your pages in the Special Persons Birthday book too." Her mouth turns down and her eyes fill with tears. "Then you get to do show-and-share with your pages in the class. And I really want to do it right, but I can't! Everybody else has baby pictures and they tell about when they were a baby…but I don't have any pictures and Esme and Carlisle didn't know me when I was a baby so I don't have anything to write."

"Let me have a look." I flip through the book. She's right that there are a lot of baby pictures, but they're not all newborns in hospital with mom and dad. One kid has a picture of himself as a bunch of cells in a petri dish. There's one with two dads, one who lives with grandparents, and another one whose photo is on a plane coming over from China after she was adopted. There are other pages that don't have any baby photos too. I find the instructions the teacher has pasted into the front of the book and read them slowly. "You don't have to have a baby photo," I say. "That's just a suggestion. You can put any pictures you want, and write about anything that makes you special…"

"But I want baby pictures and stories like everyone else!" Alice wails, crumpling into a little heap on the floor in her usual over-dramatic fashion.

I can't laugh at her though, because I can see how much this matters to her and I know that it's not about what everyone else has done. Alice doesn't care about being like everyone else. She's fixated on the baby pictures and stories because it's something that she desperately wants…but it's also something that she doesn't have and, without Momma on the scene, something we can't give her.

Esme peers into the room, looking at Alice in concern. "Are you all right Alice? Can I do anything to help?"

Alice lifts up a woebegone face. "You didn't know me when I was a baby."

I show Esme the book. "She has to do her pages in this, because it's her birthday. It doesn't have to be about when she was a baby, but…" My voice trails off.

I see the dawning understanding on Esme's face, and then she sits cross-legged on the floor and lets Alice crawl into her lap for a hug. "Well, that's a tough one. Would you like to call your mommy and see if we can get her to help?"

I can't help grimacing. That's not going to work. Fortunately Alice doesn't even consider it, scowling with a flat out, "No."

"Well what about Emmett?" Esme suggests. "He might remember something."

"But he's not a mom or dad," Alice sniffs.

I laugh. "Thank god for that! I do remember when you were born though. When Momma told me that I was going to get something to play with and take care of I got all excited because I thought I was getting a dog. I was pretty disgusted when she said it was going to be a baby," I tell her.

Alice giggles. "What about when I was born?"

"You were tiny," I say slowly. "I don't know what you weighed, but you were the smallest baby in the hospital. You had so much hair that Momma put a little hair bow in it right away. And I thought you looked like a chimpanzee, and I started calling you Monkey-face."

It all comes back to me and I smile at her, wishing for a moment that she could remember the way Momma was with her then. It wasn't always awful.

"I don't look like a chimpanzee!" Alice says indignantly.

"Not anymore you don't, but you did then! We don't need a baby picture…we can just glue in a picture of a monkey and no one will know the difference," I tease her.

Alice is laughing. "What else?"

"When you were little your favourite foods were Cheerios and bananas. You liked the Wiggles, and your favourite book was Where the Wild Things Are. Momma used to read it to you every night."

"Mommy used to read? Really?" Alice asks doubtfully. "She never does that."

"She really did," I say. "Every night." And this time my voice cracks.

"That information is a good start," Esme says to Alice. "We can take some photos of you now for your page, and you can write about what Emmett's told you. Maybe we can find pictures on the internet of Where the Wild Things Are and the Wiggles and you could include those too?"

"And a monkey!" Alice laughs hysterically.

"A monkey too," Esme agrees. "Now, why don't you go and find your pencils and markers so you can make a start?"

She waits until Alice has disappeared before she reaches across and rubs my shoulder. "Thank you Emmett. She's so lucky to have you."

"She doesn't remember anything good," I say, staring at my hands. "She thinks that Momma was always…like she is now. And she wasn't. It wasn't sitcom perfect like this house, but it wasn't always all bad either. There were a few years when Alice was little, after Christian left, when it was pretty good. Momma loved her…and she doesn't remember it."

"Then you can tell her about it, like you did today," Esme says gently. "When she's older and ready to listen, I think it will mean a lot to her to know that she was always loved."

"She was. Momma really wanted her. I was a mistake, I know that…you don't get pregnant in high school on purpose." I give Esme a lopsided grin. "Getting pregnant with me messed her life up. But with Alice, she was married and she wanted to have a baby. She was really excited when she found out Alice was going to be a girl. I went to the ultrasound with her, and afterwards we went straight to the mall and Momma bought all these clothes, little tiny pink things and all ruffles…I was ten and I thought it was so lame, I'd really wanted a brother…but Momma was so happy."

Esme's eyes are damp, but she's smiling at me. "See, you can tell Alice all of those things! In fact, I think we should use this to start a Life Book for her. Children in foster care often lose track of their stories and photos, so a life book is a photo album or scrapbook that they can take with them and add to wherever they go. We can ask Mara about the possibility of getting some baby photos of Alice, and we can make up some pages with stories and photos of her time here with us as well."

"Alice will like that."

"I hope so." Esme shakes her head at me. "You shouldn't think of yourself as a mistake, either…unplanned I'll grant you, but not mistake! And whatever the circumstances were, Maddie made the choice to parent you…you were loved too, Emmett."

"Who loved you? Me? I love you!" Alice comes crashing back into the room with the plastic tub she keeps her pencils and markers in. "Can you write my name all fancy for my page? I want it to look good."

I grab a pencil and quickly outline her name in block letters that go across the page. "There you go – you can fill the letters in." I've got myself under control enough now to look at Esme. "And thanks…I appreciate what you're trying to say."

"Did Edward look like a monkey when he was a baby?" Alice asks, as the piano music stops and Edward comes strolling into the room. She is filling in the letter A with crooked purple stripes.

"I wasn't there when Edward was a baby either," Esme says.

"I looked like a small and very angry old man, if the pictures are anything to go by," Edward says, looking over Alice's shoulder at what she's doing.

"Remember that Edward's adopted? He had his first mother, who was the one who gave birth to him and looked after him when he was a very little boy," Esme says to Alice. "I became his new mommy when I married Carlisle."

"What happened to your old mommy?" Alice asks Edward. "Did Mara take you away too?"

"My first mother died," Edward says matter-of-factly. "So that's why Carlisle and Esme adopted me and became my new mom and dad."

"Maybe my mommy might die as well," Alice says almost casually. "She does bad drugs that make her sick a lot…if she was dead then Esme and Carlisle could adopt me and be my mom and dad too."

"Alice!"

She looks up at me defiantly. "What?"

"What the hell kind of little sociopath are you? You don't wish that your mom would die!"

"Emmett." Esme puts a hand on my shoulder, reminding me to be calm. "Alice didn't mean it like that."

I grit my teeth. "Well she shouldn't have said it then!"

"Don't be mad," Alice mutters. "I didn't mean that I want Mommy to die…I was just saying."

I force myself to take a deep breath. The truth is, I'm not mad. But Alice has just put into words my deepest fear and my most shameful wish.

I'm so scared you're going to die Momma.

But the way it is now, Alice and me living here without you and all your shit…I wish it never had to end.